The 65th Thessaloniki International Film Festival will be held from Thursday 31 October to Sunday 10 November 2024, in both physical and online venues. A total of 252 feature and short films will be screened in the renovated and newly equipped Olympion and Pavlos Zannas cinemas, in the cinemas of the Frida Liappa, Tonia Marketaki, John Cassavetes and Stavros Tornes cultural complex of the old port, as well as in the Makedonikon theatre. In addition, a further 67 films will be shown online, through the Festival’s platform online.filmfestival.gr.
Among the guests attending the next edition of the festival, two stars, Oscar-winning French actress Juliette Binoche and Oscar-nominated British actor Ralph Fiennes, will receive the Festival’s honorary Golden Alexander Award. The Festival will also pay tribute to Greek filmmaker Panos H. Koutras with the same award. Casting director Ellen Lewis, Martin Scorsese’s collaborator, will give a fascinating masterclass, while the admired writer Victoria Hislop will be this year’s Agora ambassador. Agora Series, TIFF’s forum on series production in Greece and the wider South East European and Mediterranean region, returns with a full 2-day programme, where film industry professionals will have the opportunity to participate in innovative actions and initiatives focused on the future and support for emerging filmmakers. The projects selected by Agora (which is supported by the Creative Europe-MEDIA programme) are eligible for a series of major awards, accompanied by either cash prizes or services.
In addition, showrunner and executive producer of hit TV shows Anna Winger (Unorthodox, Deutschland 83) will give a masterclass as part of the Agora Series section. Agora Meet the Future, will feature a number of renowned artists giving a series of exciting masterclasses: Composer Zbigniew Preisner, a close collaborator of Krzysztof Kieślowski, music editor Suzana Perić, with films directed by Martin Scorsese, Greta Gerwig and Peter Jackson to her credit, as well as renowned Greeks Nikos Kypourgos, Evanthia Reboutsika, Tassos Boulmetis, Kostas Christides and Coti K., who have been praised for their excellent work both in Greece and abroad.
Press conference to present the program of the 65th Thessaloniki Festival.
The poster for the 65th edition of TIFF was designed by visual artist Stella Kapezanou. This year, the Festival assigned its spots to two young, up-and-coming Greek filmmakers. The ‘Transformation’ and ‘Vampires’ spots were directed by Nikos Kolioukos, while the ‘Fear?’ spot was directed by Meni Tsilianidou.
The Festival kicks off on Thursday 31 October with Chilean director Pablo Larraín‘s Maria, starring Angelina Jolie, and concludes on Sunday 10 November with Joshua Oppenheimer‘s The End. The two-time Oscar nominee for Best Documentary will attend the Festival’s closing ceremony to present his film.
Likewise, strange and mysterious creatures of cinema, monsters that live alongside us inside us, take centre stage in the 65th TIFF’s major tribute entitled We, the Monster. The guest curator of the tribute is Carlo Chatrian, former artistic director of the Berlin and Locarno film festivals. The Festival’s major tribute includes twenty-two masterpieces of world cinema, the titular exhibition with works by Malvina Panagiotidi and David Sampethai, as well as a special publication in two languages with editorials and analyses by film theorists, sociologists and journalists.
The 65th edition of TIFF will pay a large-scale tribute to the unconventional, pioneering and daring Greek film director Panos H. Koutras, who will receive the Festival’s honorary Golden Alexander. The Festival, in collaboration with the Department of Communication and Media Studies and the Department of Digital Arts and Film at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, will organise a one-day colloquium dedicated to the work of Panos H. Koutras. In addition, the Greek director will give a masterclass on the queer identity of his cinema, in the framework of the Iconic Talk powered by Mastercard. Last but not least, the festival magazine First Shot will take the form of a funzine, entirely focused on Panos H. Koutras. A retrospective of his filmography, which we have already reported on here, will be screened at the festival.
The successful Meet the Future initiative, jointly organised by the Festival’s Greek Programme and Agora, brings the art of film scoring to the forefront this year, through the tribute ‘Music in Motion: The Art of Film Scoring’. In addition, the expanded notion of family in all its contemporary and alternative forms and expressions, as part of an ever-changing world, takes centre stage in the tribute Un-Family-ar held as part of the Survey Expanded subsection of the Meet the Neighbors+ competition section. A total of 11 films representing 16 countries will be screened.
The Festival also hosts a tribute to the versatile Danish artist Jesper Just, who will attend the 65th edition of TIFF to present his work, screening 18 short films, including his latest film Interfears, starring Matt Dillon. The Thessaloniki festival will also devote its attention to the bold, eccentric and uncompromising French artist Niki de Saint Phalle. Producer, film director and curator Arielle de Saint Phalle, her niece, has been responsible for the restoration of the film A Dream Longer Than Night, which will be screened in Thessaloniki.
Press conference to present the program of the 65th Thessaloniki Festival.
The Greek film program, which we have already informed you about, includes 22 feature films and 24 short films, of which 18 will be world premieres, within the sections ‘First Run’ and ‘Crossing Borders’. There will also be a special screening co-organised by the Festival and Finos Film of the film Miss Director, with the score by the legendary (and recently deceased) Greek composer Mimis Plessas. It will also include the award-winning Greek short films from the recent International Drama Short Film Festival.
Greek films are eligible for a number of independent awards. Among them is the newly created FOS Award, promoted by PPC. Actors and actresses making their film debut, in a leading or supporting role, in a Greek feature film participating in the Festival’s official programme, compete for the €3,000 prize.
International Program
The 65th Thessaloniki International Film Festival has four international competition sections, accompanied by substantial cash prizes. A total of 12 films are taking part in the International Competition, including three Greek films. The films are up for the Golden Alexander ‘Theo Angelopoulos’, worth 10,000 euros in cash, the Silver Alexander-Best Director Award, worth 5,000 euros in cash and awarded by COSMOTE TV, the Festival’s Major Sponsor, the Best Actor Award, the Best Actress Award, as well as the Best Screenplay or Artistic Achievement Award.
A total of 12 films are participating in the Meet the Neighbors+ competition section, including three Greek films. The MtN+ films compete for the Golden Alexander ‘Michel Dimopoulos’, which carries a cash prize of €10,000, the Silver Alexander-Best Director Award, which carries a cash prize of €5,000, the Best Actor Award, the Best Actress Award, as well as the Best Screenplay or Artistic Achievement Award. In the competition section >>Film Forward, 12 other films, including three Greek films, are in the running for the Golden Alexander Award, which carries a cash prize of 8,000 euros, and the Silver Alexander Special Jury Prize, which carries a cash prize of 4,000 euros.
The Immersive competition section returns to action in style, presenting 8 films, which will compete for the Golden Alexander, endowed with 2,000 euros. The installation Intangible, by Danish artist and designer Carl Emil Carlsen, will be presented out of competition. In the Open Horizons section, we discover the most avant-garde voices in current cinema, while we can catch up with our beloved filmmakers in the Special Screenings section. Moreover, the ‘Round Midnight zone will bring us together after hours and the NextGen section will spread its youthful atmosphere, the Festival will host educational screenings for schools, at the Stavros Tornes theatre, as well as in the Stavroupoli and Sykies regions, in collaboration with the municipalities of Pavlos Melas and Neapoli-Sykies, respectively. Once again this year, in the framework of the Smart7 film festival alliance, the Festival will host a competition section, in which seven films (one from each country) will compete for the Smart7 Award, worth €5,000 in cash.
A total of ten Greek and English-language podcasts participate in the Festival’s Podcast Contest, while another 17 are included in the Nexus Section. Podcasts in the Contest section compete for the Best Podcast Award. In addition, all podcasters between the ages of 25 and 35 who participate in the Festival, both in the Podcast Contest and in the Nexus Section, will be eligible for the ENS Louis Lumière – Institut Français de Grèce Award for Best Audio Documentary Creator. All podcasts, as always, will be available for listening through the Festival’s website www.filmfestival.gr.
The Accessibility Award, presented by Alpha Bank, the Festival’s Accessibility Sponsor, will be awarded for the third consecutive year to a personality or a film that raises issues related to unhindered access to the arts. The 65th edition of TIFF will screen two landmark Greek films in terms of universal accessibility: John the Violent by Tonia Marketaki and Listeia stin Athina by Vangelis Serdaris.
The Festival programme, as well as more information on the films, is available at www.filmfestival.gr.
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